11.  The applicants were born in 1962 and 1959 respectively and live in Şırnak. They stood for election in the parliamentary elections of 3 November 2002 as candidates of the People’s Democratic Party (DEHAP) in the province of Şırnak, but neither of them was elected.
12.  Following the 1999 earthquakes, Turkey went through two serious economic crises in November 2000 and February 2001. There then followed a political crisis, due, firstly, to the state of health of the then Prime Minister and, secondly, to the numerous internal divisions within the governing coalition, a grouping of three political parties.
13.  It was in that context that on 31 July 2002 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (“the National Assembly”) decided to bring forward the date of the next parliamentary elections to 3 November 2002.
14.  In early September three left-wing political parties, the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), the Labour Party (EMEP) and the Democratic Socialist Party (SDP), decided to form a “Labour, Peace and Democracy Block” and to form a new political party, DEHAP. The applicants began their electoral campaign as the new party’s leading candidates in the province of Şırnak.
15.  Such pre-electoral alliances had already been formed in 1991: the Nationalist Labour Party (MÇP – the successor to and predecessor of the MHP) and the Reformist Democracy Party (IDP) had secured seats for their candidates by joining the list presented by the Welfare Party (RP); and the People’s Labour Party (HEP – the predecessor of DEHAP) had won eighteen seats in Parliament by placing candidates on the list of the People’s Social Democrat Party (SHP). In that way some parties not likely to obtain 10% of the national vote sometimes manage to obtain parliamentary representation: they join the list of a larger party and then, once elected, leave it and go their own way, either with independent MPs or under the banner of another party.
16.  The results of the elections of 3 November 2002 in the province of Şırnak gave the DEHAP list 47,449 of the 103,111 votes cast, a score of about 45.95%. However, as the party had not succeeded in passing the national threshold of 10%, the applicants were not elected. The three seats allocated to Şırnak province were shared as follows: two seats for the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma – the Justice and Development Party, a party of the conservative right), which had polled 14.05% (14,460 votes), and one seat for Mr Tatar, an independent candidate who had polled 9.69% (9,914 votes).
17.  Of the eighteen parties which had taken part in the elections, only the AKP and the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – the People’s Republican Party, a left-wing party) succeeded in passing the 10% threshold. With 34.26% of the votes cast, the AKP won 363 seats, 66% of those in the National Assembly. The CHP, which polled 19.4%, obtained 178 seats, or 33% of the total. Nine independent candidates were also elected.
18.  However, not only DEHAP, which polled 6.22%, but many other political parties were unable to obtain seats in Parliament. These included the True Path Party (DYP, centre-right), the National Action Party (MHP, nationalist), the Young Party (GP, centrist) and the Motherland Party (ANAP, centre-right), which polled 9.54%, 8.36%, 7.25% and 5.13% of the votes cast respectively.
19.  The results of these elections were generally interpreted as a huge political upheaval. Not only did the proportion of the electorate not represented in Parliament reach a record level in Turkey (approximately 45%) but in addition the abstention rate (22% of registered voters) exceeded 20% for the first time since 1980. As a result, the National Assembly which emerged from the elections was the least representative since 1946, the year in which a multiparty system was first introduced. Moreover, for the first time since 1954, only two parties were represented in Parliament.
20.  To explain the National Assembly’s unrepresentativeness, some commentators have referred to the cumulative effect of a number of factors over and above the existence of a high national threshold. For example, because of the protest-vote phenomenon linked to the economic and political crisis, the five parties which had obtained seats in the 1999 parliamentary elections – including the three which had formed the governing coalition between 1999 and 2002 – were unable to reach the 10% threshold in 2002 and were accordingly deprived of representation in Parliament. Similarly, electoral fragmentation had an effect on the results in that numerous attempts to form pre-electoral coalitions had come to nothing.
21.  After these elections the AKP, which had an absolute majority in Parliament, formed a government.
22.  In early May 2007 the Turkish Parliament decided to hold early parliamentary elections, choosing 22 July 2007 as the date. The decision followed a political crisis resulting from Parliament’s inability to elect a new President of the Republic to follow on from Ahmet Necdet Sezer before the expiry of his single seven-year term of office, on 16 May 2007. In the normal course of events, these elections should have been held on 4 November 2007.
23.  Fourteen political parties took part in the elections, which were marked by two characteristics. Firstly, a strong mobilisation of the electorate was observed following the presidential crisis, since the participation rate rose to 84%. Secondly, political parties used two pre-electoral strategies to circumvent the national 10% threshold. The Party of the Democratic Left (DSP) took part in the poll under the banner of the CHP, a rival party, and by that means managed to win thirteen seats. The Party for a Democratic Society (DTP, pro-Kurdish, left-leaning) presented its candidates as independents using the slogan “A thousand hopes”; it also supported certain left-wing Turkish candidates. This movement was backed by other small left-wing groups such as the EMEP, the SDP and the ÖDP (the Liberty and Solidarity Party, socialist). More than sixty independent candidates stood for election in about forty provincial constituencies.
24.  In the elections the AKP, the CHP and the MHP managed to get over the 10% threshold. With 46.58% of the votes cast, the AKP won 341 seats, 62% of the total. The CHP, with 20.88% of the votes, won 112 seats, 20.36% of the total; however, the thirteen MPs mentioned in paragraph 23 above subsequently resigned from the CHP and went back to the DSP, their original party. The MHP, which polled 14.27% of the votes, won seventy‑one seats, or 12.9% of the total.
25.  The strong showing by independent candidates was one of the main features of the elections of 22 July 2007. There were none in the National Assembly in 1980 but 1999 saw them return, when there were three. In 2002 nine independent MPs were elected from a national total of 260 independent candidates. In the elections of 22 July 2007, twenty-seven independent MPs were elected. In particular, more than twenty “thousand hopes” candidates were elected, after obtaining approximately 2.23% of the votes cast, and joined the DTP after the elections. The DTP, which had twenty MPs, the minimum number to be able to form a parliamentary group, was thus able to do so. The independents also included a socialist MP (the former president of the ÖDP), a nationalist MP (the former president of the Great Union Party – BBP, nationalist) and a centrist MP (the former president of ANAP).
26.  A government was formed by the AKP, which again secured an absolute majority in Parliament.